Hall's reception theory

Hall’s reception theory is an active audience theory which sees the audience being actively engaged in the interpretation of media texts, rather than be passive consumers. The idea is that as individual’s we interpret texts in different ways, which shows that even if one message is sent out, it’s not only that message that gets received.

Hall also claimed that texts go through stages of encoding and decoding. This is the idea that texts are coded by the producer and that texts contain the ideologies of the people who created the text. Decoding is when the audience views the text and place their own ideologies into the texts.

Hall included three different types of audiences deciding of text:

• Dominant: How the producer wants the audience to view the media text they agree with the message that is being conveyed.

•  Negotiated: A compromise between the dominant and oppositional readings, the audience understand and agree with the text but disagree with other areas they have their own view on.

• Oppositional: The audience rejects the encoded meaning and creates their own meaning for the text, they fully disagree with the message being submitted.